


knowing

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy's mental health, F/M, MY EMOTIONS, Non-Explicit Sex, after-Hive fic, alternating Daisy/Coulson pov, written post 3x17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6612424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Contemplative fic, after Daisy is free of Hive. </p><p>  <em>And she’s not sure how she’s ever supposed to know anything again. She’s not sure how she’s ever supposed to trust anything — trust herself — ever again.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	knowing

They leave on a Friday, and it feels like an ending.

The Playground is in ruins, so _everyone_ is leaving, but only May knows that he and Daisy aren’t headed to the new base location.

“You don’t have to do this,” she tells him, and her voice is so dead, so quiet. “You can just leave me.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“You know I would let them put me in —”

“I’m not turning you over to the army.”

Talbot wouldn’t hurt her, he feels pretty sure of that, but he’s not going to abandon her to people who are too scared of her powers to treat her like a person. The things Daisy did, they weren’t her, and it would be a mockery of justice to make her face the kinds of consequences some people in the US Government want to make her face.

She nods, and he doesn’t know if it’s because she accepts his decision or because she’s just too tired to argue.

That’s all she’s been since they were able to inject her with Simmons’s vaccine against he parasite.

And Simmons explained it, in some vague scientific terms — hormonal balance and brain chemicals and dopamine and things, things that will probably return to normal soon.

Of course he doesn’t doubt that Simmons is right, but he also knows — he deeply and intimately _knows_ — that there are some things that there are some experiences that change the whole idea of what _normal_ means.

 

* * *

 

The emptiness is the worst part.

And there are _so many other things_ that she knows should be the worst part, but the thing she can’t get past is the way it feels like her whole body has been hollowed out, like when they got rid of whatever parasitic fungus inside of her, it left her...empty.

The _worst part_ is that she misses it. She misses the sense that everything empty in her, everything longing, was filled.

She misses something that made her evil, and she wants it to hurt — she wants to hate herself for it — but she can’t. She’s too empty for self-loathing.

“Are you hungry?” He asks her after they’ve been driving for a few hours; she doesn’t know where they’re going. Eastish. He probably told her, but she’s barely been able to pay attention.

“No,” she answers honestly, trying to inject some kind of life into her voice because she knows she’s freaking him out.

She doesn’t want to freak him out. She’d rather be alone so she didn’t have to worry about freaking other people out, so that she didn’t have to think about what she looks like to someone else.

“Would you drink a smoothie?”

He looks so hopeful, like he’ll be able to alight on some form of food that will fix her, and she wants him to feel better. She wants him to feel like he’s helping, but maybe she also resents him a little bit for making her care at all about how he feels.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Yeah, I’ll drink a smoothie.”

 

* * *

 

He drives through the night, too aware of the fact that Daisy doesn’t sleep, even though she must be exhausted.

She’s barely slept since they got her out, since she shook Hive to pieces shortly after. He doesn’t even know what happened between her and Lincoln, just that things have diffinitively ended and that Lincoln, too, is going his own way.

Truthfully, he wants to ask, but he wouldn’t — not even if things were normal, he wouldn’t. And things aren’t normal.

From the corner of his eye, he watches her stare blankly out the windshield, and his jaw ticks against the need to reach over and touch her, as if that would be enough to ensure him she’s really there.

(He had spoken to her, once, in those days she was gone. Her but not her. Her but willing to throw him across a room, so...not her at all. She had been so weirdly blank — but full and _happy_ , she had said. Truly happy, truly fulfilled for the first time in her life, and he doesn’t know whether that was a lie or the truth as she knew it, but the sound of her voice and her vacant eyes that weren’t quite hers telling him she was _happy for the first time in her life_ will haunt his dreams forever, joining the images of her bleeding out in a cellar in Italy, her body too small and fragile behind glass, her face on the pictures of vivisected bodies from the Hydra base in the Arctic.)

From the corner of his eye, he watches her stare blankly out the windshield, and his jaw ticks because this is his fault. He hunted Ward down, he provided the vessel for the _thing_ that did this to her.

She hasn’t been forthcoming about any of her own feelings — if he understands her at all, _she_ doesn’t know her own feelings, yet — and her silences make it so hard to stop himself from jumping in with his own guilt.

Somehow he’s managed so far, but he just needs to _talk_ to her, to feel things as just a little bit normal.

“When I was carving,” he tells her, cutting through the silence between them, “right after we solved it, there would be nights when I would wake up and miss it.”

She looks over at him, something other than blank for the first time in a long time.

“Those were painful for you,” she tells him, and he wishes she didn’t know that.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “And frustrating. But there was that feeling that I was connecting to something bigger.”

“And you missed it when it was gone?”

He swallows.

“Sort of? I didn’t miss the pain or the frustration, I wasn’t sorry that I finally got to sleep, but…”

“It’s nice to feel like you have a place,” Daisy tells him, in this distanced way, like she’s not talking about herself.

“You know that you —”

“Yeah, Coulson,” she cuts him off. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

He mostly stays quiet, which she appreciates. Coulson is actually pretty good at that, at giving her what she needs, and when he talks, he keeps it mostly focused on himself. She sees through the ploy — he’s trying to show her she can talk to him without directly prodding her — but the truth is that she appreciates that, too.

On some level, she knows she’s freaking him out because she’s not doing well pretending things are normal, but it’s like she’s forgotten what normal is supposed to look like.

But Coulson has adapted, and she appreciates him.

Lincoln couldn’t shut up  — she shakes her head, dislodges thoughts of him. He wanted her to apologize, and at first she liked that. Because she had wanted to apologize, she had wanted someone to _forgive_ her. But then he wouldn’t let it go, the way she used him, the way she set him up, the way she taunted him with her feeling of completeness. 

And it was never about forgiving her. It was always just about him, and she’s too fucking tired and too fucking empty to try to fill him up, to try to give him what he needs.

(She wonders if she’ll miss him later. Later when Simmons says she’ll be feeling more herself, except she can’t remember what that is — to feel like herself. As though she’s currently someone else, someone who isn’t herself.)

Every so often, she can feel Coulson look over at her, and she can see the muscle in his jaw flex, like there’s so much he wants to say. And she still resents it, a little at least, the way she can’t help but care about what he feels, but he’s trying so hard not to burden her.

And she knows, of course she knows, that he feels like he alone is to blame. He won’t ever ever forgive her because he thinks he’s the one who needs forgiving. Like because his hand happened to be a part of some grand plan a thousand years in the making, like because he did the right thing at the wrong moment, somehow it’s all on him.  

“It’s not your fault, you know,” she tells him, words he had said to her before they left, words that don’t mean that much when what you really want is forgiveness, words to break a long silence after his jaw ticks for the twelfth time in an hour.

He looks over at her and smiles, a frail, forced thing, and then turns his eyes back to the road.

The sky is starting to turn pink in front of them, lovely color that paints the sky and brushes the trees around them with just enough light to make them shine, and everything is so _beautiful_ that it hurts, like the growing light illuminates all the empty places inside of her.

 

* * *

 

 

They arrive at the cabin shortly after daybreak, and he carries her bag inside as she follows behind him.

“It’s not a bad place,” he tells her, trying to sound upbeat about it. Because it’s _not_ a bad place — it’s a nice little cabin, one Fury had brought him to once years ago when they were hurt and on the run.

She nods.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” Daisy tells him, and he’s not sure if she’s worried about him, or if she feels guilty that he’s giving up some part of his life for her, or if she actually wants to be alone.

“I’m not staying because I have to,” he counters. “But I’ll give you space if you need it, just —”

“I know.” And she doesn’t smile because that isn’t exactly something Daisy does right now, but she at least looks at him like she _does_ know, like she knows she can trust him. “I think I need a nap.”

“Me, too.”

He ushers her into one of the bedrooms, where they make the bed with a fresh set of sheets. Once they’re done, she opens her bag and sifts through her clothes like he’s not even there, so he steps just outside.

“If you need anything, I’ll be here,” he tells her quietly, and then shuts the door behind him.

He unpacks the foodstuffs he’s brought and then lies down on his own bed without bothering to make it.

 

* * *

 

 

It turns out Coulson’s idea isn’t such a bad one, like he knew something she didn’t when he picked this place. It feels calm, and it helps her sleep for the first time since they cured her, since she’s been back in her head by herself again.

And it’s funny how she misses the noise of it, the noise of sharing so many thoughts and being a part of something so big, but at the same time, now that she’s alone again, she finds the world around her deafening. It’s like when she was part of _it_  she didn’t have to work so hard to silence the outside world, the vibrations of everything and everyone around her.

But now she does.

She has to work _so hard_ , and it never struck her as that much work before — blocking out the vibrations she didn’t want to hear, holding back her powers.

But now that she’s so empty, it’s like all the vibrations move right through her, like she feels them all in her bones _all the time_.

It’s been three days since she killed it — the thing with Grant Ward’s face — and it’s the only time she’s used her powers since she’s been alone again. Almost a week.

It’s hard to imagine that she’ll ever use them again, that she’ll ever be able to. Because the fact of it is that it was _her_ using her powers — it was _her_ who killed Gideon Malick, and it was _her_ who destroyed the Playground, it was _her_ who almost leveled Los Angeles, and it was _her_ who almost killed Coulson.

At no point was she so distanced from herself that she _felt_ forced, no, she felt it was the right thing to do. She _knew_ it was the right thing to do, the right way to help her team, the right way to save the world. She _knew_.

And she’s not sure how she’s ever supposed to _know_ anything again. She’s not sure how she’s ever supposed to _trust_ anything — trust _herself_ — ever again.

Based on what she understands about it, about what the Kree did, she was never _supposed_ to to be able to control her powers by herself; she was never supposed to be able to function as an individual; she was never supposed to trust herself.

They were all made to be empty, like vessels to be filled, weapons to be controlled.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s late afternoon when she comes out of her room, and he’s made them sandwiches already, just something for basic nourishment. And she seems better, in a way.

Not perfect, but more present, maybe. More at home in herself, more with him when their eyes meet over the kitchen table as they eat.

“We were made to be weapons,” she tells him, and he’s heard this before, has no desire to hear it again.

“You’re not a weapon.”

“I am,” she tells him, easily, like she’s telling him her name or her favorite color. She drops her sandwich on her plate and looks at him, scared and small and sad but _herself_ — so different from the person who told him how happy she was. “That’s what I was designed to be.”

“But you’re more than that, Daisy. I don’t care if you weren’t _meant_ to control it, you learned to control it. _You_ did that.”

“You of all people should know how dangerous I am.”

“It wasn’t you who did those things. It was —”

“It _was_ me, Coulson. It was me. I was there, I was part of something bigger, yes, but I just knew...they were the right things to do. I _knew_ it.”

“Whatever you were a part of, Daisy, I don’t pretend to know how it felt. But it was a _parasite_. It took control of your brain. _You_ would not have done any of those things.”

“You can’t know —”

“I _do_ know.”

“How?”

She meets his eyes, challenging but maybe hopeful, maybe like she needs the proof as much as he does.

“Because _you_ would never hurt me.”

“Coulson how can you —”

“Because I trust you with my life, Daisy.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“But I do.”

Coulson watches as she draws a slow breath and then stands up from the table and walks back to her room, shuts the door softly behind her.

 

* * *

 

 

He seems _so fucking sure_ that she would never hurt him, not if it were up to her, and the thing is that he’s right.

She would never hurt him. The thought of hurting him makes her heart twist, causes physical pain, and it’s the first time she’s really felt something that’s just her since she’s been back by herself. It’s the first thing she feels in her own bran that she _knows_ she can trust, and it’s _pain_ at the thought of hurting Coulson, at the memory of what her body did.

It’s like a spark in her chest because she remembers talking to Coulson, she remembers telling him how _happy_ she was — happier than she had ever been in her life — and she remembers throwing him across the room, she remembers thinking of him as no more than a pet, maybe. Something she was fond of, but could easily leave behind.

She remembers feeling that way and being _so sure_ those were her own feelings, the same as her own feelings told her it was right to do everything else she did.

But they were wrong. They weren’t hers.

Obviously they weren’t hers because _she would never hurt Coulson_. She would never leave Coulson, she would never think of Coulson as someone expendable. 

And for the first time, she knows that the thoughts that had been in her head, the person she was when she was part if _it_ , all the horrible things she did — she _knows_ they weren’t her. She trusts it because she would never hurt Coulson, and Coulson trusts her with his life.

After days of listening to people tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that it wasn’t her, she believes it, she _knows it_  for the first time. And it’s not the fulfillment of being part of something bigger, of finding her place, but suddenly she feels less empty.

She cries — she sobs — into her pillow, and it’s not happy, but it’s feeling. It’s her.

 

* * *

 

 

He stands at her door for a long time — too long — listening to her cry, hand poised to knock and then dropped to his side in an endless cycle of indecision.

Hearing Daisy cry is painful, like something innate inside of him tells him to go to her, tells him to make it stop.

Whether it’s out of a genuine belief that it’s better for her, or out of his own fears, he doesn’t knock, though. Instead, he stands outside like some kind of sentinel until he hears her drift to sleep, and then retires to his own bed.

It’s later in the night — he’s not sure how much later — that he’s awoken by his door creaking open, by the sound of footfalls in his room.

“It’s me,” he hears Daisy’s voice before he’s even had a chance to panic, and he sits up in bed.

“Daisy?”

“Yeah, I…” He watches her take a breath, can see her lick her lips in the dim light that filters through the window. “You’re right. I would never hurt you.”

It makes him smile.

“I know.”

“I would never do any of those things.”

“I know.”

“I remember thinking I was so happy, like I was finally the person I was always supposed to be, but —”

“It wasn’t you. None of that is your fault.”

She makes a noise, like a laugh and a sob and a breath at the same time, and wipes her hand across her eyes.

And he doesn’t know what he’s expecting — he doesn’t know that he’s expecting anything — but he’s definitely not expecting her to climb onto his bed, for her to crawl up over his body like this is somehow familiar.

“None of it is your fault, either,” she whispers, somewhere near his ear, and then curls herself into him, her head on his shoulder.

And, well, of course it’s his fault, of course it is, but he can’t help the smile anyways as he wraps his arm around her, as he invites her into his space, and falls asleep with her soft weight on top of him.

 

* * *

 

 

When she wakes up the next morning, she’s spooned up behind Coulson, her arm slung over his chest and her face buried in the back of his neck, and it feels good.

It feels like something she wants — something she trusts herself to want.

And it’s like it gives her permission to trust herself about other things.

She presses a soft kiss to the back of Coulson’s neck and then slowly climbs out of bed, tiptoes out of the bedroom and then out the front door, towards a grassy clearing just a little ways from the cabin.

Her powers have frightened her; the sheer magnitude of what she is capable of has frightened her, but she decides that she can’t let herself be frightened. She can’t let herself forget the way she’s learned to control her powers before, the way she was _more than_ whatever she was when she was part of...it.

Daisy lies down in the grass and plucks a random leaf up off the ground, using her powers to gently — so, so gently — lift its slight weight up into the air, so it hovers above her head.

Because she’s not less, and she’s not empty. No, she’s more and she’s herself and she trusts herself to be in control.

 

* * *

 

 

Coulson’s scared when he wakes up alone — unsure for a moment if he’s more scared that he imagined the previous night, or that she’s gone — and he races out of the bedroom, putting on his hand as he does, then out of the cabin, stopping suddenly when he sees her.

Smiling.

It takes him a moment to realize what’s going on — to see the leaf and to realize that she’s keeping it in the air, that she’s smiling at her own powers, at her own control.

It’s a beautiful sight.

“Coulson,” she calls to him, awakening him from a deep contemplation of her and her smile and her powers. “Come here.”

He’s barefoot, wearing  boxers and an undershirt— not much different from what she's wearing — but the cabin is secluded and they’re very much alone. So he goes.

As he gets closer, Daisy pushes the leaf towards him until he can reach out and catch it, hold it by its stem and twirl it between his fingers.

“Come here,” she repeats herself, gesturing to the grass, and he drops to his knees beside her because of course he does.

“Daisy?”

“Do you trust me?”

He nods because he _does_ , that’s the thing. He’s trusted her since he first met her, he’s trusted her almost without reason except that she is Daisy and that’s a damn good reason.

“That’s good,” she whispers, and then pushes him flat on his back so she can climb on top of him, so she can lean down and kiss him — passionate but so, so careful. He kisses back, but mostly he lets himself be kissed, finds himself moaning loudly when she scrapes her teeth across his lower lip.

“Daisy,” he breathes into her mouth, into her kiss. It’s more than a little shock, and he’s not sure if he’s more shocked that she is kissing him, or that it turns out he _really_ wants her to kiss him.

Maybe he’s always wanted her to kiss him.

“I never knew I wanted this,” she tells him, her voice quiet against his lips. “But I do. I know I want you.”

She says it like it’s important — that _she knows she wants him_ — and he supposes he understands why.

“That’s good,” he answers. “You can have me.”

She laughs at that and pins his arms to the ground above his head, meeting his eyes questioningly — he nods — before she kisses him again.

 

* * *

 

 

She _has him_ in the field, rides him in the grass until she comes because she wants to, because she knows it’s the right thing to do.

After, she lies on his chest and listens to his heartbeat, feels the warm wet ache between her thighs, and breathes.

Maybe she’ll always feel empty spots inside her, maybe she’s not meant to fill them all, but she at least feels whole and herself.

And maybe it’s good that it’s a Sunday because it feels like a beginning.


End file.
